


Beyond

by RedPony



Category: The Truman Show (1998)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 15:03:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8582947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedPony/pseuds/RedPony
Summary: Truman indulges in reminiscences about the escape and the first time shortly after.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [the truth will set you free (but not until it's done with you)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7967410) by [Swiggity_swydra_fuck_hydra (Haych_Aych_Ach)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haych_Aych_Ach/pseuds/Swiggity_swydra_fuck_hydra). 



He remembered.

 

Standing outside the dome a year after he had left, no, rather escaped from it he remembered how he felt when he had stepped outside that door into the real world. He had felt battered and sore, so raw inside and out, but fueled as he was by adrenaline it hadn’t showed. He hadn’t even had the limp that had accompanied him nearly a week after. People might not know it, he surely hadn’t, but facing a huge manufactured storm meant to frighten you enough to turn took its tolls. The deep bruises and excoriations had kept him in pain for a long while. He had suffered more injuries during that ordeal but he choose not to think about them now.

 

The last year had been turbulent to say the least. It was a shock to see how much he had been deceived. How much he had missed from the real world. They had not only kept him from real people but from reality itself far more that he’d suspected when he had decided to step out. -the world he was kept in had been a ‘save heaven’, not just for him but for the audience. A place with no modern problems, far beyond the more complicated or uncomfortable truths real people had to face and live with. A fantasy world people would dream of and wished for.  
Except him.  
They had done even more harm to him with that. Depriving him of the chance to feel empathy, gratefulness or even being able to share the burden with others had widened the distance he felt his whole life.  
Shivering he pulled his jacket tighter around him while moving forward. He was facing the backside of the dome now, just as he had when he got out. He hadn’t known it back then but he was lucky to come out that particularly door and not one of the main entrances. This was a heavily locked and surveilled door just as any other, but just from the outside. From the inside it had been easy to open since it was meant as an emergency exit for maintenance workers. Of course the door doesn't led directly to the outside. It had been a hassle to finally get out all the way.  
Had he gotten out front he would have stumbled into the arms of a flock of press people and fans, no one could have predicted what would have happened then.

 

But thanks to Sylvia and her TLF People, together with their meticulous gathering of any tiny scrap of information, she and a couple of Police officers, their official car being the single vehicle no one would stop, where able to snatch him away before anyone had a chance to react an get to him.  
And if not for Sylvia, even then the officials from OmniCam might have tried to persuade him into something he didn’t want to, maybe even just kept him till he agreed to anything they wanted just to avoid the fallout they got after he eventually came to his senses and started suing.

 

But even if they weren’t able to get to him directly, they still had caused enough problems.

 

There had been so many obstacles. He even had to fight to get real credentials. They had given him nothing willingly. Not even his birth certificate. Without the immense pressure from the wide range of his fans, he probably would still be fighting in courts for every little compensation he needed to survive in a world he had nothing real to offer.  
Being behind reality about fifty years didn’t help you in case of getting a common job.  
The most hurtful had been the realization how much they had shaped him by limiting his opportunities. His main dream had of course been to be an explorer, a childish dream somehow but still something he might have been able to build on if he ever had gotten a chance. He had been good at school, greedy for knowledge, in real world there might have been a career opening in science, there might have been scholarships and various opportunities to explore all kinds of stuff or even just his own boundaries.  
But in the dome was no room for a geek. No room for being special. They needed a common guy, a person the audience would relate to. He had been devastated when watched how they had squashed his individuality, his courage and his curiosity.  
It was hard to see it all played out while watching recaps of the show, he could clearly see the efforts they’d made to weed out every ambition or tendency which might have led him to a wrong direction, might have build him towards anything that could have ‘negative’ consequences for the show. How they manipulated him and led him towards that acceptable and nice life which wasn't planned with his best interest in mind but to let the show make satisfying progress.

Watching parts of the show wasn’t even necessary sometimes. Only thinking about it made it painfully obvious that it was absolute impossible to let him live out anything beyond mediocrity.  
Even that had been somewhat limited.

  
He couldn’t engage in any profession that might have needed anything beyond the borders of Seahaven itself and nothing that wouldn’t relate to the occupation, understanding and even sympathy of a substantial amount of viewers. Nothing that might require too much research or constant further education from his side. Nothing that might have affected his physical health in any way, bringing him in direct contact with too many different people everyday or influencing people during his work beyond short contact.  
Nothing that required too many realistic sets or took him too often out of an office.  
He couldn’t become a doctor which wasn’t so bad since he never had the ambition, at least he couldn’t remember, since they could neither provide the necessities for him to earn the degree nor the patients, he couldn’t become an entrepreneur either, even if he had wished to, too complicated to stage for him, he couldn’t even have stocked vending machines, since then he would have had to many human contacts.  
A steady, boring desk-job was all they could let him do and it was what he did.

No choice.

  
He still felt the bitterness return when he thought about it.  
He had also seen the castings for his future wife to be and it made him sick. No real choice in that department either.

 

He was now close enough to the dome so it blocked out the real sun. A sun that was so much warmer, so much more dangerous than the sun he was used to for thirty years. He had welcomed his first sunburn though, since it was another sign of being in the real world. He even had developed a tendency to risk it sometimes.  
Sometimes he even risked more than just a sunburn.

 

The knowledge of danger and his ability to deal with it had been liberating. The director and other staff hat installed a lot of insecurities and fears in him, more than just aquaphobia. He had feared big dogs, violence, pain, he had been living to a set of (for him) unwritten rules of behavior, had always tried to model himself after what he assumed people wanted from him, expected him to do, all to overcome the distance between him and his world, oblivious of the fact that there was more to that than just him being a bit different. He truly and absolutely hadn’t been on eye level with the others for his whole life, always been barely more than the ‘star’ who had to be kept in the dark. They had been so committed to their roles that they hadn’t had any energies left to get truly committed to him too.

 

In case of Hanna Gill it had even been an effort to put as much emotional distance between him and her as possible. Truman sighed when he thought of the so called ‘True Talks’ he had watched. It had been a strange feeling to be in that marriage and he had always thought it to be his fault. Had tried his best to love her more, get closer to her while seeing her as a loving wife wronged by his secret longing for Sylvia. He didn't want any other girl, had never had any real interest beyond Sylvia, but the woman he knew as Meryl seemed determined to get him, so eventually it was for her he’d married. He had wanted to make her happy, believed he’d spare her a life full of longing just the way he did. Only in the very end he had grown into the suspicion that she didn’t truly love him, though even then far from grasping the idea that it might be all show.  
Still he had felt somewhat guilty. Thought he might have involuntarily pushed her away. It had made him miserable and he had thought it to be as bad as it could come.  
But then he learned that she was paid extra for having sex and had renegotiated her contract every new ‘season’ of the show and he had realized that he wasn’t even close to learning all the humiliation and hurt the ‘show’ still had in petto for him, even though it had ended.  
He reached the dome, opening the outer door with his keycard and and entered the dark maintenance tunnel.  
It had been so …. disturbing stumbling trough this darkness the first time. He had been so exhausted from the long day pretending to be back to his usual self and the sleepless night he had spend escaping from his own ‘home’, drained from the nerve-wrecking ordeal on the ship and the moment he reached the wall were he’d thought there were no exit at all. He remembered this special moment of desperation and it made him shudder again before he pushed it away.  
Then the moments in the dark before he found his way off of the soundstage that had been his home for all his life. Is head had nearly busted with panic but he wouldn’t turn, wouldn’t go back for all his life was worth, then there where the exit, the real exit, or if one would like to see it from is point of view: the entrance to the real world.

 

Now he was opening the inner door and stepped out onto the staircase to the soundstage.

 

The first thing he realized was the smell. It smelled so much different than the real sea. It lacked the special quality of freshness and crisp humidity a real sea breeze contained.

This air had some kind of staleness in it.

 

Far away from him he could see little sails drifting tho and fro on the artificial piece of ocean the producers had brought into creation by various set artists. The dome was not uninhabited.  
Now it was one of the most sought out vacation spots in the world. He was told his parents old house was already booked in advance for the next two years, his own even longer. The maintenance cost for the Truman Resort was insane, but the winnings even higher. People booked a week or even a month just to pretend it was still running and the price was high. Still they all seemed to want it, all of his ‘fans’.

 

The strangest thing of it all was that most of it was now his, part of the immense compensation sympathetic judges and very invested advocates had won for him. Arguing that loosing the dome and everything in it or involved with it might discourage any company to try anything like the exploitation he had to endure ever again had eventually closed the deal. The first thing he did after he realized what they’d done and what was his now he’d tried to sell it, only learning that no one could afford to buy it. That was when one of his lawyers had suggested to instate a trust fund and let a committee decide what to do with everything and how to use it and he’d leaped to the idea. Now he was more than safe concerning money not just for a lifetime but for more.

 

The settings had been unusually fast. Omnicam Corporation had not crumbled under the law but the people. It seemed nearly everyone had been a fan one way or the other. Even those who didn't like the show, had thought him to be a looser or even worse while he was unaware, were caught by his daring escape. Also no one wanted to confess their own selfishness. They didn’t want to realize that in the end, the audience had been what allowed a corporation to exploit a human being the way they did by lapping up the product and accepting all of Christoph's explanations and insurances without any second thought. So when Truman asked for compensation, there was no judge to be found who was not willingly jumping to his aid. Omnicam's tries to fight had been tiresome still, but just as futile as his tries to just leave town. In the end, no one in the corporation had been willing to go as far as he had been. Not that it’d have helped.

 

  
Getting acclimated to the world itself and his ‘true self’ had been gruesome. He still wasn’t done with it at all.

It was more than just loosing someone or getting uprooted somehow. He was in the absolute terrifying position to loose literally everything.  
It was hard to wrap his mind around the fact that everyone and anything he new was fake and lost forever. He had no family, no friends, no acquaintances of any sort he could count on. No one he thought he’d known had even actually existed. The whole world, his whole worldview, his way of looking at it, the things he was used too, everything was gone.  
It had been crushing.  
Even though Sylvia was there for him and stood by his side, she was still a stranger to him. He knew nothing about her, who she was and still she was the only one he had. The worst thing they could have done was leaping into a relationship and though at first he desperately tried to do just that thankfully she had had more common sense and was the most loyal friend he had but not more at first.   
Evetually things slowly turned to the better. His feelings for her became as deep and true as they could be, but they’d grown from a stable ground of knowing each other and not just a crush he’d nursed since high school. They had started dating and it was wonderful. One of the only stable and reassuring things he had in his life.  
Slowly he turned back to the door in the sky, half expecting a voice suddenly booming from the moon beyond the clouds demanding him to stay, but nothing happened.  
He went back out of the dome and crossed the same dusty speck of dirt where maintenance cars use to park on its way back to the car.  
It had cost him some time to get people to leave him alone. At least he had given his one and only interview, just begging people to gift him the freedom of space around him and being left alone after a life of constant watching. It had not kept them all away at once but the number of fans following him anywhere had decreased ever since.  
Of course there where those who just couldn’t let go, couldn’t accept that he wasn’t theirs, never had been, but the courts hat ruled him not to be a celebrity and declared his private sphere protected by any law concerning him as much as the next man and his security was as discreet as effective so now he could move around nearly unobserved.  
Still it had been one of the worst obstacles to overcome, one day beeing a simple insurance company worker, full celebrity and everybody's darling the next. It had driven him nuts. He’d never wanted to be someone others followed around. Didn’t feel drawn to fame or power. He was just a curious guy, wanted to learn new things, making experiences. Finally that was what helped him pull through.

 

The laws considering celebrities, denying them much of the private sphere common people had a right to, submitting them to the greed of the rainbow press might have crumbled him if the judge deciding if he was or was not a celebrity hadn’t be so sympathetic.  
A big newspaper had thought it to be ok to send out not just journalists but hardcore paparazzi after him the second he had been out of the dome, publishing photos of his examination in the hospital after he broke down from exhaustion after his escape. When he sued them for invading his privacy the lawyer who hat represented them had tried to declare him a celebrity with the audience having a right to gain information about all his whereabouts and had argued that whether he wanted it or not, he had been a TV Star like any other, and since his whole life was already out in the open for everyone to see, he had no right to keep the rest private. The judge turned that down and accepted the simple fact presented by his own lawyer that former exploitation without his knowledge and therefore without consent would not rectify further exploitation against his will.

 

So he was a no-celebrity celebrity now. A person who, even if it was just for a while, nearly every single person of the world knew at least by face, but no one had a right to know. It still confused him sometimes even if not as much as some other facts.

 

Adjusting to a complete new life hadn’t just been hard because oft the circumstances. After realizing the full extend of his situation, he had become deranged to the core. It had taken him months to even start to pull himself out of the stupor he had been hiding in. Hours and hours of therapy. He still was seeing a shrink quite regularly but it got better and better every day. The psychologist he was seeing even told him how extraordinarily fast he made progress. It felt good to hear that at last in one point he was truly special.

 

He was naturally good natured and amicable. Truly friendly and forgiving to the core. He was not one to carry a grudge or to dwell in misery. He'd always striven for positiveness and happiness. Soon he found out that the real world hold more of that too.  
Besides all its difficulties and obstacles, the people around him were now genuine, they weren't bound by contracts instructing them how to react and regalement their interaction with him. Of course that also meant they could harm him, could be rude or irritable. But more important, it was also their choice to connect with him, maybe even become friends.

 

The experience of having real acquaintances and eventually even one or two real friends he could trust was as overwhelming as it was blissful. He had never before realized how strained every contact he had in his former life had been. How stiff and distant.

 

At first it had been just strange and hard to connect. Everyone seemed to know everything about him or at least believed so. He barely had anything to tell and for a while became nearly completely silent in company, fearing and hating nothing more than to tell or reminiscent about anything and hearing something like ‘hey! I remember that episode!’

 

But then he met more and more people and started to come closer to one or another. First was Sylvia of course, but also the man who’d taken on his legal requirements among with helping him accommodate with all the requirements of becoming a citizen of the modern world.

 

Of course that man, a skilled and proficient assistant of a big businessman, wouldn’t have quit his job and taken over caring for Truman if he hadn’t been a fan. But still he was one of the few persons to accept that seeing someone living his life does not necessarily mean knowing him.

 

Adrian had always been quiet, unassuming and candid against Truman. He never behaved as if they already where friends, never tried to end his sentences and never offered too much beyond what he was paid for in the beginning. He became Truman's assistant manager and proxy at first. Helped him and Sylvia through the rough first time. She had met him when she joined the TLF after leaving the show and he was the only one not just obtruding himself on Truman but offering service and help for reasonable conditions. Establishing at first a healthy working relationship. Naturally Truman and Adrian had to spend much time with each other and soon Truman confided in him, spoke with him and at least trusted him. Adrian gave back as much trust and soon relied on Truman just as much as he relied on him. It was the first non-artificial relationship Truman experienced outside the dome.

 

He reached his car parked at the border of the huge shadow cast by the dome looming over the landscape. He got into the drivers seat and just sat there for a while, basking in the wonderful knowledge that now he could just drive anywhere if he wanted, just going wherever it lured him to.

 

He had reconnected with Louis, against Sylvia's advice but nevertheless he did.

 

He had felt so betrayed at first, the only consolation was learning about Louis Coultrain's similar lack of choices.

 

It was hard not to just hate everyone. Nothing seemed real and everyone seemed a liar. More than anyone else, even his so called ‘wife’, he had hated his supposed ‘best friend’ Marlon.

 

But then he learned more about the actors, about what they where paid and what they where contracted for and what fallout they had taken and eventually he found out that Louis never had renegotiated his contract, never demanded any leave aside from the necessary one to overcome his drug addiction.  
An addiction he had gotten when he couldn’t bear his lies any longer and he had only found the strength to overcome it by thinking about how lonely Truman was without him since the director decided against entering a new ‘best friend’.

 

Louis had been brought into the show by an overbearing stage mom sacrificing the childhood of her boy for the pay. He had had no more choice in it that than Truman. When they reconnected Louis told him how hard it was to be seven years old and having to deceive the only friend you had, knowing that if you didn’t you would be taken away from him. And Truman realized that it wasn’t hard to believe that at all. Even if it was not true, even if maybe he just wanted it to be true, it was at least not so far fetched.

 

It hadn’t been like it was in the show, of course not. But it had made things so much easier. It helped him reconnect with himself, those parts stained by the show but still his and getting over those things he wanted to leave behind while integrating those parts of him he wanted to keep, use and integrate.  
Lois also was the one helping him to distinguish between what was just real in Seahaven and what was also real, well, for real. After all he was the only other person who knew the feeling of growing up in an artificial environment and having to adapt to different realities.

 

It had been a good experience after all. He had found Louis much different from Marlon of course, and in another way much the same. His personality was surprisingly familiar and the main difference was that he was much more likable without the niceties and planned speeches another one was whispering in his ear.  
Now Truman could truly confide in him, and when the time of paranoia came it was Louis who helped him turn over his whole flat, the one he had not been able to leave because of thousands of fans following him everywhere. Finally arranging him being brought to his own secured city house when he could not endure the feeling of being watched any longer.

 

Still Truman preferred plain environment. Less chances to hide cameras and microphones. His new home was very modern and bare of too many ornaments. But nowadays he spend more and more time at Sylvia's anyway. Her space cluttered with knickknacks and stuff gathered through a whole life. Real stuff. No product placement.  
But soon it would be different again. He had decided to leave Hollywood where he had to live while settling his legal businesses and settle down somewhere quiet. Somewhere closer to nature and further away from people. Sylvia had agreed to come with him if he wanted, but she had asked him to think about it. To put some distance between him and all the mess that just had stared to settle and decide what he really wanted. That is why she had moved ahead to her parents. Telling him he should come as soon as he knew what he wanted to do or stay away if he preferred that.

 

In his car his look wandered to the envelope on the dashboard, it contained the address she had given him should he decide to come after her.  
A smile appeared on his face. He had decided where he wanted to drive to.

 

Truman started the ignition. He was ready.

 

Slowly he drove away from the dome. He was on his way to go home.

 

Home to Sylvia.

**Author's Note:**

> Some additional info taken from the script, the background info, the documentary and the Making of
> 
> http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the-truman-show_shooting.html
> 
> http://www.screenstyle.com/trumshowin.html


End file.
